An Oration Delivered Before the Class of 1859, June 24, 1859 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from An Oration Delivered Before the Class of 1859, June 24, 1859<br><br>We have been looking forward, Classmates, ever since we first answered to our names in the big white hall yonder, to a day when we should all be together for the last time; when assembled in this church, we should listen, with our fathers and mothers, our brothers, sisters, and friends, to what all think and feel, but one must put into stuttering speech. We have never lost sight of this day; we have looked forward to it from out the smoke of college pipes; we have seen its sights in the embers of the college fires; we have wondered how we should feel; we have poetized about it; we have talked about it; and now it is here. We are now to know feeling instead of sentiment, and find out whether four years' rubbing of the branches and wedding of the bark, makes the sap of one tree run in the veins and arteries of its neighbor, and whether there will be no scar when they are taken up, each with his clod of earth, and transplanted to other groves than those of old Harvard.<br><br>Why is it that memory stands sideways, half covered with flowers Would the ladies tell us that it is because she thinks her profile more beautiful than her full face I think not.<br><br>The pleasures of hope and the pleasures of memory ought to have been written by the same person. To the child, Hope is all in all; she is not half, but wholly covered with flowers, and she looks with full expectant face toward the future. As the child becomes a boy, the boy a man, Hope turns sometimes to watch some object that she has longed for and loved, as it glides past her, by her far into the distance, and then we call her memory.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.